


Escaping the Friend Zone

by Aspera



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Muggle, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Gen, Heavy Angst, I was annoyed about something, I’m serious, Modern AU, Modern Marauders (Harry Potter), Oneshot, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, and this came out of me like a sneeze, james has died, probably tinder, so has petunia, there will be no sequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-11
Updated: 2018-09-11
Packaged: 2019-07-11 05:00:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15965240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aspera/pseuds/Aspera
Summary: Severus is deeply in love with his best friend, Lily. He knows they're soulmates. She doesn't have a mark, and neither does he. All he needs to do is convince her that they're meant to be.





	Escaping the Friend Zone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TypoTycoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TypoTycoon/gifts).



Sev couldn’t take it anymore. He couldn’t. They’d done this so many times; he would have thought that he would be completely anesthetized to the sensation by now, but he wasn’t. He could feel every place where Lily’s body touched his as they sat on his couch. Lily had snuggled in under Sev’s arm, her long red hair tickling his neck, and set the giant bowl of buttered popcorn down in his lap. Her left leg brushed against his right each time she reached across to take another handful of the popcorn. Her focus was completely overtaken by the movie she had chosen from her Netflix queue; Sev’s focus was completely overtaken by Lily.

He tried – and failed – to direct his attention back to the TV and the syrupy melodrama of whatever rejected Lifetime movie Lily had selected this time. He tried to focus on anything but the way that Lily smelled like sweat and chlorine and strawberry jam, and the way that her head was currently nestled in the crook of his neck. Sev wanted to tighten his arm around her waist, to draw her closer, to get her to look at him with those big, beautiful green eyes of hers so that he could finally, finally kiss her. 

They had planned on going to the zoo today – it was easier for Sev to be Lily’s best (and only) friend in Cokeworth when they were out in public and around other people. He could concentrate on what she was saying and the horrible jokes that she made when they were outside in the muggy air and under the sun and eating overpriced white people Chinese food that he hated and she loved from those stupid little paper cartons. But a savage rainstorm had scuttled their plans to go into the city and Lily hadn’t wanted to go home after she had spent so much time convincing her father to let her go out for the day. “If I have to spend one more minute in that mausoleum, I swear that I will scream,” she’d said when she had turned up on his doorstep after his parents had left for work, soaking wet and shivering. 

The music swelled, drawing Sev’s attention back to the screen. The two protagonists were kissing in the rain. It looked like the credits were about to roll. Sev didn’t remember how these two were supposed to have met and why they were supposed to be so good for each other; he only remembered that Lily had laughed low in her throat and that he’d had to hold his breath so as to not immediately turn to her and cup her face in his hands and kiss her until they were both breathless.

“Don’t you ever wish you could have that?” Lily asked, her voice a little ragged. She sniffled – it figured that she would be crying right now. She loved these dumb romances, no matter how completely illogical the plots were and how instantly the two main characters fell in love. And she looked so beautiful when she cried – it made it so unfair that she wasn’t his and was just his friend instead. She’d cried into his shoulder a lot over the past few years.

“What, a cold from standing out in the pouring rain? No, not at all,” Sev said, trying to be glib and not petulant. 

Lily swatted his chest with the back of her hand and slid out from under his arm so she could look him in the eye. Sev immediately felt the lack of her and it made his throat ache with want. Green eyes met brown ones. “No, you dipshit, a soulmate,” she said, scoffing at Sev’s obvious idiocy. God, he loved when she looked at him.

“I don’t believe in soulmates,” Sev lied. He did. He was looking right at his. He knew this, and he’d known it ever since they met in the second year of primary when she’d hit him in the mouth with a swing on the playground. It had been accidental, probably. He’d cried when he saw the blood that was dribbling down his chin and onto his brand-new Power Rangers t-shirt which had made Lily cry.

“Oh, c’mon,” Lily said, completely incredulous now. There was no sign of tears anymore. “Everyone believes in soulmates! Everyone looks all over their bodies for those little magical tattoo things, trying to figure out the first words that their soulmate will say to them.”

Sev cleared his throat. “Maybe everyone is stupid. Maybe being friends first is stupid,” he said under his breath. “I just think that the whole concept of soulmates takes away everything good about relationships. It makes everyone perpetually unhappy. You could spend your whole life looking for someone you’ll never find because the phrase tattooed on you is something completely ordinary like ‘Hey, how you doing today?’ or ‘Can I squeeze by you there?’ It’s a stupid system and it makes people think that they’ll be happy only if the right person comes along.”

Lily sighed. They’d had this discussion before. “Not everything is about your parents and how badly they fucked up, Sev,” she said. She wouldn’t meet his eyes now and leaned back against the arm of the couch twirling a lock of hair between her fingers. 

He wanted to tell her. “I just think that there are more important things to a relationship than someone speaking the magical words at the right time. Like actually having things in common and your values and stuff.”

“My parents said the magical words at the right time to each other. They were super happy. They would still be together – ”

“If your mother and sister hadn’t gotten killed by a drunk driver on a bank holiday weekend, I know. You’ve told me,” Sev said, cutting her off before she could tell the whole sob story again. He was tired of it. 

Lily rolled her eyes. “You’re such a boy,” she said, obviously disappointed. Sev didn’t know why this was a problem.

“I don’t have any words on me anyway,” he said. His mother had taken him to a magidermatologist to be sure when he was ten years old. The kind doctor hadn’t been able to find even the beginnings of words forming anywhere on Sev’s skin. His mother had wanted to sue the doctor for malpractice, but his father had been able to convince her that it wasn’t a guarantee that anyone would even have a soulmate. There was only so much magical blood left to go around, now that the faeries had left the mortal plane for good. 

“Not that you know of,” Lily countered, turning to sit cross-legged. Sev spared a quick glance at her long, sun-browned legs. “For all you know, your words can be printed on your spleen or something.”

Sev laughed. Ever the optimist, his Lily. No, not his. Maybe his? He wished she were. The emotions warred within him. The love he felt for his best friend was trying valiantly to beat back the fear that she would reject him. She would definitely reject him. She always said that it would be a mistake to date someone that you went to elementary school with. Too many conflicting memories.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Lily asked suddenly, breaking Sev out of his reverie. 

“L-like what?” he stammered, throat suddenly dry. He swallowed hard, trying to wet it.\

“Like I’ve just solved one of the Millennium equations,” Lily said, tilting her head to the side. “But come down with incurable facial warts in the process.”

“I’m not looking at you like that,” Sev said, dropping his gaze to his lap.

“You could tell me, you know. I promise I wouldn’t look at you differently,” Lily said, leaning across the distance between them and putting a hand on his shoulder.

Sev didn’t remember leaning over the couch to kiss Lily. One second, he was sitting on his side, and the next he had his hands in Lily’s hair and his mouth was on hers. She gasped and Sev took the opportunity to deepen the kiss. His heart was pounding in his ears and there was no thought in his head other than she loves me back. 

Lily’s hands had come up to Sev’s shoulders, and he expected her to draw him closer. Except she wasn’t. She was pushing him away with more and more force. It wasn’t until she turned her head away that Sev finally let her go. 

“What the fuck was that?” Lily asked. Her face was flushed and her hair was mussed prettily, but her eyes had gone as hard as flint. 

“I thought you wanted me to,” Sev said. His whole body was numb. She was angry. How could she be angry? She had – she had just told him – hadn’t she?

“I thought that you were going to tell me that you were gay!” Lily said, voice rising to a pitch he had never heard her use before. Not even when Potter, her boyfriend of three years, had dumped her in front of the entire sixth form class at prom. “I wanted you to know that I supported you no matter what. I wasn’t asking you to kiss me.”

Sev blinked. “But I’m in love with you,” he said somewhat stupidly. He knew it was stupid, but he couldn’t focus on anything but the lead weight that was settling itself in his chest. “I’ve always been in love with you. Ever since you hit me in the face with that swing in second grade. That’s the reason that I don’t have any words – you never said anything to me!” Sev made to grab for her hands, but stopped when she snatched them away, slightly horror-struck. “You said you wanted a soulmate! You always want to watch these sappy movies – I thought it was because you wanted me to tell you already.”

Lily’s face went from red to bone white in three seconds. She stared at Sev, her jaw slack. She started shaking her head. “No, you aren’t,” she said in an undertone. “You can’t. You are the only one that I have left. And now you think that you’re in love me because – This is – I can’t – I can’t – no.” Lily stood up then, her face covered in tears. She was still wearing one of his old t-shirts and a pair of his mother’s workout shorts that she’d left behind when she left his father. Her clothes had been soaked and covered in mud from when some asshole had splashed her when she waited for the bus. They’d thrown them in the wash and had been waiting for them to dry before making some cupcakes or something.

“What do you mean you can’t?!” Sev asked incredulously. This couldn’t be happening. She had to love him back. She’d left him all those signs. The cuddling. The late night chats. The way her dad trusted him to come over to their house when he wasn’t around – it must mean that he wanted them to be together. “I love you, Lily. You belong to me. That’s what that means.” She loved Breakfast At Tiffany’s. She would love that reference.

She was so distracted that she stumbled over the edge of the couch in her haste to leave the room. Lily swore in French and righted herself quickly. “I have to go,” she said in an undertone. Sev stood up to follow her, but she was already halfway to the door. “I can’t be here now. I can’t.”

“But – your clothes,” Sev said. Lily batted a hand and continued slipping on her shoes. “At least let me drive you home. It’s still pouring.”

Lily shook her head emphatically. “I’ll be fine,” was all she said before she stumbled out the door and into the rain. 

She slammed the door behind her and Sev stood there, staring at the closed door, stunned. Distantly, he heard the dryer alarm go off. Lily’s clothes were dry.

This couldn’t be happening again. It couldn’t. She’d done everything differently this time. She hadn’t flirted. She hadn’t ever mentioned that she wanted to date him or that she wanted more than just a best friend. Right?

Lily stumbled home in the rain. She didn’t live all that far away from Sev’s house, but she had to time her arrival home just right so that she didn’t alarm her father. He knew that she was going over to Sev’s today on her only day off for the next two weeks but she had promised that he would drive her home. Especially with the rain. Especially since her mother and sister had been killed in a car accident two years ago.

She wanted to scream. She would, if it wouldn’t get her carted off to St. Mungo’s. At least wanting to scream took the edge off the tears, not that she would. Lily ground her teeth instead, ducking her head and trudging along the soaked pavement. She probably should have called for an Uber, but she couldn’t stay in that house any longer with that boy who thought he knew her and deserved her and that she belonged to him now that he wanted her.

The wind was picking up now, and Lily tried to steady herself. She needed to walk faster, whether or not her father would catch her coming home and soaked and hurt or not. He’ll just have to let it go, Lily thought. Because I don’t want to talk about it now or ever again.

Sev had been such a good friend too. That’s what hurt her the most. She’d needed someone strong and steady to lean on when her whole world had turned upside down two years ago. Losing your sister was like losing a limb, and losing your mother was like losing the ground beneath your feet. Sev and his friendship had been like a life jacket in those months – he didn’t take away her pain or even try to understand what she was going through but he helped her keep her head above water. The waves had still come and could still drown her, but she was able to get through the days with Sev’s help.

Lily reached the end of her drive without being splashed – not that it would have mattered because she was completely soaked. Again. Her dad’s car wasn’t in the drive, so she’d timed it correctly in order to avoid being questioned. Lily went to dig her keys out of her giant purse, and then cursed. She didn’t have her phone or her purse. She had left them on the counter in Sev’s bathroom, or maybe on top of the dryer? It didn’t matter. She didn’t have her keys. She’d have to go around the back garden and hope that her dad had left the shed door unlocked so she could get to the spare key. Oh, god – what in the name of Merlin would she do if he’d locked it?

The fence door swung open easily, but that was never going to be the issue. Lily picked her way across the grass, trying to avoid the puddles and the dog turds that she was supposed to clean up yesterday. She jiggled the door handle on the shed. It was locked. “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Lily exclaimed. Tears threatened again. Being locked out of the house in the pouring rain after her best friend in the world had decided to reveal that he wasn’t actually her friend and just wanted to climb out of the friend zone on the anniversary of her mother and sister’s death was just the icing on the cake. She kicked the shed door for good measure. It stayed locked. Bugger.

Lily sighed and it turned into a groan at the end. There was nothing to do but to sit on the porch and wait for her dad to come back. She didn’t know what time it was, but he never went into the office for very long. That was the benefit of being independently wealthy and on a Board of Directors for some random initiative to figure out where all the magic was going, she supposed. Ample family time. Lily had never been so glad to be on the receiving end of her father’s clinginess.

“Hey, wait!” Lily froze, pouring rain be damned. “Lily! Wait! I’m sorry! Please, just talk to me!” Sev’s shitty purple Neon was sitting in the drive. He slammed the door and rushed over to her side. “You don’t have to tell me that you love me right away! It’s okay! I just know that we’re meant to be. Please, just give me another chance to prove it to you!”

“Do you have my stuff?” Lily asked. She was struggling to keep her voice even. She didn’t look at Sev, and instead picked her way across the pavement to sit on the concrete stoop of her house.

Sev ran up to meet her and flopped down next to her. He took her elbow; Lily jerked it out of his hands. “What did I do wrong?” he asked in a small voice. There was just a tiny edge of a whine to it. “I thought that we were just getting to know each other really well before making it official. We’ve been through so much together. We even managed to keep in touch after leaving for different universities. That has to mean something.”

“Severus,” Lily said calmly. “Do you have my stuff?”

“Why won’t you talk to me?” Sev said, his voice rising. There was a definite whine to it now. “I just told you that I loved you. That means something! You are my soulmate, okay? You don’t have to love me back right away but you definitely need to be nicer to me about this! I’m the victim here!”

Lily started laughing. It wasn’t a nice laugh. It wasn’t her normal laugh either. She didn’t know if she’d ever made that sound before. “Why are you laughing at me?” Sev asked petulantly. “It’s not funny! I told you that I loved you after I’ve been your best friend and listened to you whine about your dead mom and sister for two years and now you’re laughing at me? You’re such a bitch, Lily! I deserve better than this! I love you!”

“Oh, yeah, Sev,” Lily said sarcastically. “You’re definitely the victim here. You didn’t just realize that your best friend in the whole world has been lying to you for two years, and that he doesn’t actually care about you at all. All the support that he’d been giving you was really just a ploy to get into your pants and he thinks that all the times you talked to him about your grief, you were just whining. And despite all that, he thinks he’s your soulmate because he doesn’t have any words on his body and neither do you! Because that’s just how it works!” Lily kept laughing, and finally looked over at Sev. His face was red, from the roots of his black hair to the collar of his shirt. He was pissed. Definitely super pissed. If Lily cared at all what happened to her for the rest of this awful, horrible day, she’d worry that he was about to hit her.

“That isn’t what this is,” Sev ground out from between clenched teeth. He was trying to keep a handle on his temper. That was a good sign at least. Lily meant enough to him that he wasn’t going to hurt her like he’d hurt her ex-boyfriend James when he’d showed up late to the sixth form graduation. “Why are you making me look like the bad guy here? None of this is my fault.”

“Because you are the bad guy here, Sev,” Lily spat. She scraped a lock of wet hair away from her face. “You just told me that I’m not your friend and that I haven’t been in years. God, I should have known, especially after what you did to James. I’m not even a person to you! I’m just the reward that you get for being a good person and for sticking it out with the tragic little orphan girl!”

Sev’s eyes went hard. “He was an ass. He stood you up to grad.”

“No, he didn’t. His car broke down. He was waiting for a tow. He’d sent me like six texts. I was just waiting outside for him because I had the tickets and Mrs. Bordaluzzi wouldn’t let me leave his at the door.” Lily sighed. “That isn’t even what this is about. This is about how you think that you ‘deserve’ me and that we belong together because you want me and that I don’t get any say at all.”

Sev opened his mouth to make a retort, but Lily cut him off with a gesture. “And don’t give me that ‘but we’re soulmates!’ crap!” Sev closed his mouth but Lily could tell that he still wanted to protest. “Unlike you, I already know who my soulmate is. I’ve always known. And let me just tell you this: it isn’t you.”

Sev flinched as if she’d slapped him. “That doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “You don’t have any words written on you anywhere. I don’t have any words written on me anywhere. We have to be soulmates. You’re the only person that I know that doesn’t have any.”

Lily rolled her eyes. “You actually knew two,” she said. “James Potter didn’t have any words either.”

“What does your dead neighbour have to do with this?” Sev asked, clearly frustrated. Lily couldn’t bring herself to care.

“Because he was my soulmate, you absolute arseshole,” Lily snapped. “And now he’s gone, and I don’t have one anymore.”

Sev’s jaw fell open, and rested there, gaping, like a fish. “That’s not possible,” he said. His colour had gone all splotchy.

“Just because you don’t pay attention to anything outside of yourself doesn’t mean that it isn’t possible, Sev,” Lily said, turning away and crossing her arms across her chest. She stared down the street. One of her neighbour’s cats was making a run for it to hide inside someone’s garage. “The vast majority of soulmates aren’t romantic. Usually they’re family. Sometimes they’re best friends. My soulmate was my ex-boyfriend, who was killed in the same car accident as my family, the one that nearly killed me two years ago as well, and I know that because I had his hand print on my ribs.” Lily lifted her shirt to show Sev, whose eyes lingered too long on her exposed bra before finally settling on the shiny white scar.”

Sev reached a hand towards Lily’s skin, but stopped himself. “Why is it white like that?” he asked in a strangled voice.

“That’s what happens when your soulmate dies and you don’t,” Lily said.

“Oh,” was all he could manage in reply.

They sat there on the wet stoop for a few more tense moments.

“I have your stuff,” Sev said eventually. He got up slowly and walked to the passenger side of his car. 

He handed Lily a plastic carrier bag full of her clothes and her purse. Lily took it wordlessly; a soft ping told her that her phone was there too. She nodded at Sev as thanks, then stood and moved towards her front door. 

Sev lingered on the stoop. “Listen, I know you’re upset, but can I call you later? Maybe take you out on a date?”

Lily sighed heavily and unlocked her door. “No,” she said. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”


End file.
